


The Southern Queen

by tullyblue12



Series: Peacetime [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22334176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tullyblue12/pseuds/tullyblue12
Summary: King’s Landing fell to Stannis Baratheon. The Starks and the Lannisters took it back, but too late. Four years later, the Southern King, Jaime Lannister and his Queen, Sansa Stark, have the impossible task of keeping the realm in peacetime.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Sansa Stark
Series: Peacetime [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1607632
Comments: 22
Kudos: 90





	The Southern Queen

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I wrote a while ago that was going to be part of a larger fic, but I'm posting it as a standalone because I would prefer to post one-shots every once in a while to this universe instead of one long story. I know I've been posting a lot of other things for Avatar: the last Airbender, but I want everyone following me for Jaime/Sansa to know I'm not done with them yet! I'm still working on From Ancient Grudge and No One Else But Us. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy this little scene! This AU is near and dear to my heart!

She found him where she knew he would be, out in the training yard with Ser Loras Tyrell. He never let the Knight of Flowers rest, but the young man never complained. She wished she could complain about his sparring practice, but did not have the luxury. Four years she’d been liberated, but she still felt like a hostage. 

“I can tell when you’re not trying, Loras,” growled Jaime, spitting at the young knight’s feet. 

“I’m sworn to keep you from danger, Your Grace.”

“Try, damn you!” 

The King was so wholly focused on his opponent, he did not hear her approach. Ser Loras, however, saw her and quickly disengaged from the match, bowing courteously. “Leave us, please, Ser Loras,” she said. 

The knight obeyed, though he stood in the corner of the yard to watch over his sovereigns. Jaime wiped the sweat of his brow away with his sleeve, displeased by her intrusion. “Is the meeting of the small council adjourned already?” 

“There was not much news today. Only a letter from my brother.” 

“Your brother’s always sending me letters. I didn’t know my father was in the habit of giving crowns to leeches.” 

_ He gave one to you _ , she wanted to say. Instead, she pushed down her anger and strove to be a dutiful wife. “It was my half-brother on behalf of the Night’s Watch. He says they are in desperate need of men and supplies.” 

Jaime laughed. “They always are. Write to your  _ other  _ brother. Have the King in the North send some men.” 

“My brother has no men to spare,” she reminded him bitterly. “If you will not send the supplies, know that Jon has written to Stannis Baratheon, too.” 

Jaime’s mouth curled. There was no man in the world he hated more than Stannis. Sansa feared him, but not Jaime. Jaime once told her he didn’t sleep at night, preferring instead to imagine all the ways he would bring Stannis Baratheon to his end. In her times of anger, she used to imagine those she hated dying too. She’d imagine Joffrey’s head on a spike and Theon’s body buried under thick sheets of ice, but she had grown so tired of anger. 

“I could have your bastard brother hanged for that letter.”

She flinched, but the subtle movement shifted the weight of the crown atop her head and reminded her who she was.  _ I am Sansa Stark, The Southern Queen. Even my King cannot frighten me.  _ “The Night’s Watch does not involve itself in the politics of the realm. If Stannis offers his help, it will be accepted lawfully.” 

He ran a frustrated hand through his golden hair, shining brighter in the lovely sun. “I give you leave to send the city’s criminals with an escort of gold cloaks.”

“The small council will need your signature on the official decree.”

“Have my father do it.”

“Your father is not the King. There are some responsibilities you cannot escape,” she reminded him heavily. Her words were too emphatic; now his eyes were staring into hers knowingly. 

“I will be up shortly to sign the decree. Is that all?”

It wasn’t, but she could feel Jaime’s patience slipping every second. “It is almost a year since we were wed,” she reminded him before she lost her courage. 

He laughed. Normally it would bother her, but it was the truest laugh she’d heard from him in too long. She smiled, chuckling herself. 

“Lord Baelish suggested a tourney to celebrate.”

“A tourney? I don’t think so.” 

“Your father seconded the idea,” she told him. She liked the idea herself, though she did not know if she could bring herself to enjoy the festivities. She longed to enjoy herself. She needed this opportunity to try. “He thought it would do well to remind our people that we are one kingdom again.”

He laughed again. “We aren’t one kingdom again, though, are we?” 

She followed him as he walked towards the edge of the cliff. He sat himself on the edge of the wall and dangled his feet above the Blackwater Rush. Instinctively, she wanted to tell him to be careful. She wanted to remind him that one wrong move could be his end, but that wouldn’t motivate him any.  _ You won’t get your revenge against Stannis _ \- that would take him away from the edge. 

“Have you come to join me?” he asked. “Come now, I won’t let you fall.” He even offered her a hand to stabilise herself as she sat beside him. The stone was smooth beneath her, and as she looked down at the water rushing below, she did not feel afraid. 

“It is very beautiful up here.”

“Quite a view.” 

“I remember your brother often walked along these walls with his men, overlooking the city.”

Jaime’s head turned sharply towards her when previously he had been looking straight ahead, maintaining his usual indifference to her presence. “Why do you mention my brother?” The tone of his words stung as awfully as a blow to the chest. 

“I just thought-”

“Shall I mention your  _ father _ to you? Shall I tell you what I remember of him, so that you can remember he is gone from you?”

This time she laughed. How could she forget that he was gone? How could she forget that her father had been executed with his own sword right before her eyes? Every morning when she woke and the maids came in to dress her, they placed the golden crown of lions ceremoniously atop her auburn curls, and it reminded her how terribly wrong everything had gone. Tears would have welled in her eyes, if she had any left from the past few years.

“Please do, Your Grace. If you have anything of him, please give it to me. I thought you would want the same of your family.”

There was a time she had hope for her union to King Jaime. Despite his age and his family name, she reveled in the opportunity to bring peace to Westeros. She thought they could heal the Starks and the Lannisters. That was the way of history, wasn’t it? Love mended the fractures. Two families warred, and a man and woman healed them for the rest of time. But it wasn’t true. Wounds ran too deep, and love touched too few.  _ Love is poison _ , Cersei told her once, but she didn’t think her king would want to hear that. 

“My family didn’t deserve what happened.”

“Neither did mine.”

“Oh, and look at how much the Starks have suffered. Your brother reigns over his own kingdom, father of two heirs already. You are the Southern Queen. Even your father’s bastard is Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.”

“You are my King,” she reminded him. She looked back out at the Blackwater Rush, which poured into the expanse of the Blackwater Bay. She thought of all the other waters it connected to, all the other lands they were responsible for. “King of the Westerlands, the Reach, the Stormlands, the Crownlands, the Vale, Dorne, and the Iron Islands. And still, I know you would trade it all for your family. I would, too.” 

“If I had been  _ free _ …” He looked wild when he said it. Angry and wild, but never did he frighten her. “Your brother was free, and he could not save you. His father, his sisters, his brothers...what did he do? He ran off to the West and took up with the first maid he laid eyes on. If I had been free, Stannis never...” his thoughts ran off, but she knew the end all the same. 

She remembered when Stannis Baratheon breached the city walls. She remembered when his sailors landed ashore and climbed the walls, the walls she walked upon today. She remembered running as fast as she could from Maegor’s Holdfast with no intention of returning. If she died, she died, but it would not be by Ser Ilyn’s hand. He wouldn’t have another Stark. She remembered the smell most of all. Whole streets went up in flames as the river burned green. She thought no man could survive the craft of Tyrion Lannister, but the imp died in the fighting, and the others were not defeated. The flaming stag standard of Stannis Baratheon was not destroyed by fire, and their fires burned for days after. Stannis burned the Sept of Baelor, the godswood, and any part of King’s Landing his men thought deserved to burn. No one wanted Joffrey to die more than she did, but even she wished it had been quicker. A swing of a sword, that’s all it took. A swing of a sword, and it could have ended the way it began. She thought King Aerys was the last to burn people. 

“I’ve gone to bed nearly every night thinking of alternatives, but I wake up to find it never changes anything. It’s best to move forward.”

“I can’t,” he confessed to her.

“Jaime Lannister, the Young Lion, the Kingslaying King of the South  _ can’t _ ?”

“The King of the Cage.”

“No one thinks that.”

“That’s the truth of it. Did you know that? Did your brother tell you how I was crowned?” Robb never told her anything, only that Jaime Lannister was a King and she would have to marry him on her fifteenth nameday. She shook her head. 

“There was a parley between your brother and my father after news got out about the Fall of King’s Landing. I was still your brother’s prisoner in Riverrun. As an act of good faith, your brother released all of his hostages except for me, though he did show my father I was alive and relatively unharmed. The first time your brother sent for me, I was dragged out in chains. Hours later, as the parley went on and terms were agreed upon, I was sent for again. I was bathed and clothed and fed, and this time I came in without restraints. Your brother stood at one end of the room, and I another, and lords fell to their knees and pledged their swords to us.  _ King in the North! King of the South,  _ they shouted. Even your mother, Lady Catelyn Stark, who hated me the most of them all, bowed to me and called me  _ Your Grace _ . All I could think was that something terrible must have happened, if my father was willing to compromise, but no one would tell me. Everyone was too busy with the boundaries of the kingdoms and the march on King’s Landing.  _ King of the South _ , they shouted, but I still felt like I was dying in that cell beneath Riverrun.”

“You led the march on King’s Landing,” she remembered. 

“Some march. Stannis had already fled.”

“Because he heard you were coming. You, your father, my brother, and both your hosts behind you. He could not fortify the city in time. He did not expect an alliance between the Starks and the Lannisters. No one did.”

“Did he ever tell you what he intended to do with you?”

“He did.” And some nights, she woke in her own sweat, thinking about it. She took some comfort in her King’s hatred of Stannis Baratheon, though it consumed him. If he ever came back to King’s Landing, Jaime would make sure it was the last thing he did.

“He had no sons to marry you to.”

_ Marriage _ , they all thought it was the only thing she was useful for. Marriage to Joffrey for the unfulfilled betrothal between their families a generation before. Marriage to Jaime for the war between their families. No, Stannis had no sons. He wanted her for something darker. 

“Lucky for us,” she said lightheartedly to take her mind off Stannis Baratheon. Her King did not smile. She wished he had. Then it would be easier to pretend they loved each other as her parents had, as his parents had. “Almost a year of marriage. The High Septon wishes us many more.”

“How long do you think it will take before the realm goes back to shit?” 

“You shouldn’t say things like that.” 

“You see it happening, Sansa. How long before the Iron Islands rebel against my cousin? How long before the tensions between the Boltons and the Starks escalate into outright war, and your brother calls on us for help? How long before Stannis Baratheon regroups with that blasted witch of his? How long before Dorne decides they don't want to bow to Lannisters anymore? How long before the other kingdoms want to try their hands at independence too?”

“We won’t let it happen.”

“Is it that easy? We just  _ won’t let it happen _ ?”

“No, but how many times did we think it was over for us before? Each time, we survived, and in the end, we came out the King and Queen. That means something.”

“If I wanted to be King, I’d have claimed the throne for myself when I slit Aerys’s throat.”

“It does not matter what you want. We have responsibilities to the people who crowned us. If we do our duty to them, they will not let harm befall us. We have to keep them fed and safe. We have to give them stability. Please, rethink the tourney, and please--” 

“Go on,” he told her. He was listening to her, which filled her with pleasure. Now if only she could say what she really wanted to. Her cheeks burned at the thought of it. 

“The people are starting to talk,” she said.

“About?”

“They say I should have the grandmaester examine me, to see if there is something wrong since I have not yet grown heavy with child.” 

He shook his head and snorted. “There were seven years between Tyrion and us. Seed does not sow the same in every woman.”

“They blame me, and the fault is not mine. An heir would put the realm at ease and solidify our dynasty. An heir would symbolize the stability our people crave. If we fell off this cliff, who knows who would sit the Iron Throne next? A cousin? My brother? Only war would decide, and then what would be left?”

“I’ll consent to the tourney. I will sign the decree when I go to sign the other,” he decided. Of her other request, he made no mention. She was losing hope for them as they sat on the cliff, even as their people saw them. Jaime took no lovers like Robert had, and so the people thought he loved his red haired Queen. And Sansa looked at no one so reverentially, which made the people think his love was returned. They must have made a sweet sight on the edge of the cliff, sitting beside each other, whispering sweet nothings and overlooking their kingdom.  _ The King of the Cage and his Maiden Queen _ .

She believed all the stories once. Now she knew they were lies, but she knew not what she wouldn’t give to make them true.


End file.
